Today almost felt like we had got stuck in some cruel time warp and were re-living the 'challenges' of last year. In fact the challenges haven't stopped coming at all, but they have at least tended to come one at a time over recent months rather than all piling up together.
After having dropped the car off at the dealership yesterday and kindly being driven home by the ever helpful Chris, Stuart received an email from them to say that it would take them a week to fix it. Really? A WEEK? So it seems that we will be without our car until at least next Wednesday. Tuesday is a bank holiday here, so I'm preparing myself for the possibility that that might prolong things still further. We're both fed up about it, having only just got the car back after they had it for 6 days last time, but there's not a lot we can do about it other than get on with things as best we can (scrounging lifts to the supermarket, settling for walks up and down the road with Reggie, and accepting that we won't be able to go anywhere or buy in any materials we might need for the next week).
I got up today and went to do my exercise for the first time in a few days - I'd like to say it felt good to get back into it, but it really only felt good when it was over! As I set my equipment up at the back of the house it was strange to see an entirely empty car park. We have been used to there being two cars there recently, and even three cars over the last couple of days.
I came back in to find Stuart in bed with his tablet PC saying that he was struggling to log onto the internet. Oh dear. I had briefly booted up my PC when I first got up but on finding that it wasn't loading web pages straight away, I had hurried outdoors to exercise, thinking it would just be a case of the computer taking a while to warm up and get going properly (a bit like me). The fact that Stuart was struggling to connect as well didn't bode well, and indeed when he got up and came downstairs to investigate the worst was confirmed: we had no internet. On this occasion the problem was a little different (and more perplexing) than usual though - all the lights were flashing on the router, my computer could even see that there was wi-fi available, but nothing would connect. Stuart tried the usual tricks of rebooting the router and even tweaking the satellite dish, but to no avail. He sent an email (via the data capacity on his mobile) to Brad at Italia Wi-Fi and we both resigned ourselves to a day of being incommunicado.
Luckily, I had a couple of bits of work I could do offline, so I set about doing that while Stuart went down to the lower terraces to roll out some more ground cover before starting to tinker with irrigation pipes.
It seems like summer has returned today (which is such a shame for our friends the Richardsons, who missed out on a good dose of sunshine last week), and we ate lunch in the blazing sun on the patio before Stuart attempted a few more tweaks to the satellite/router/modem set-up as advised by Brad (again no joy) and then returned to his pipework while I headed back to the office, all the while worrying about what work I might be missing out on doing and what the folk back in the office would think about my silence.
By the time 5pm rolled around, I had exhausted the offline work that I could do, so I changed and headed outside to see how Stuart was getting on. He had laid out all of the irrigation pipes and was just playing around with the timer device - it seems we have our irrigation successfully installed (on the mains - the next step will be to set up the water collection tanks and switch to using rainwater).
While Stuart finished up with the pipework, I used the 4 tyres that we had found at the bins in Vellano the other week to continue one of the flights of steps up/down the lower terraces, filling each tyre in with the earth dug out from the bank. That kept me busy for an hour, after which we both retreated to the patio for a drink in the warm evening sunshine.
We are waiting for a response from Italia Wi-Fi at the moment, but if there's no internet tomorrow, I won't be able to do any paid work and will have to start the weekend early. Admittedly that does sound good, but I live with a constant nagging worry about earning enough money for our keep, and enforced downtime is actually less restful than one might imagine! (Not that I plan to rest if I do have to take the day off working - I will, of course, be joining Stuart on the terraces).
Day 2: Role reversal
This morning, Stuart told me that he thought we would have working internet if not this morning then at some point today - it seemed that the problem lay with some software that required a login (for which we had referred to Brad at Italia Wi-Fi), so we just had to wait for an email to arrive with the necessary details.
After my morning's exercise, and after breakfast, there was no word from Italia Wi-Fi, so we set off for the day's dog walk. Taking advantage of the relatively cool morning air, we set off up the road with Reggie in the direction of Vellano. We made it a little further along the road than we had done on previous walks, but with Reggie's treat bag running perilously low we decided to do an about turn and head back again.
Once home, we tried the internet again, but with no response from Italia Wi-Fi, there was no change. I therefore changed into my work clothes and, while Stuart settled down in front of his PC to do some accounts, I headed off up the drive with the strimmer. Like everywhere else, the warm weather interspersed with rainy days has taken its toll on the driveway - or rather it has acted as grow-faster juice on all the grass, brambles, bracken and other vegetation - and it was in dire need of some tidying.
After an hour or so's strimming in the intense heat of the day it was time to take a break for lunch. We sat on the patio with our egg sandwiches and the umbrella up to shade us from the sun. Once lunch was over it was time to head back to work though; I'd barely managed a third of the drive so far, and Stuart had more spreadsheets to work on, so I headed off with the strimmer while Stuart headed back into the office - something of a role reversal!
I spent the next couple of hours working my way slowly down the drive, strimming both down the middle and along each of the banks. It was a gruelling chore, my shoulders ached, my hands ached and I kept getting hit by flying stones, twigs and bits of gravel. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the satisfaction of transforming the drive from overgrown to trimmed, and by 4.30pm I had finally finished. Since Stuart was still busy at his desk, I next decided to test out the black paint we'd bought to cover the water collection tanks. One of the problems many people seem to experience with these tanks is algal growth. We had considered the idea of wrapping the tanks in black plastic, but in the end decided instead to try what seemed like a quicker and easier method: paint. I therefore headed out with my can of black spray paint to see what I could do. Feeling rather like a graffitti artist, I shook the can and started spraying. It actually worked rather well, although if we are to use this method to cover all six tanks we are going to need a whole load more cans of paint - one can wasn't even enough for one tank.
While I was graffitting my way over the tank, Stuart came out to inspect my progress - he had finally finished in the office for the day. After giving his approval both to my work on the drive and my painting skills, we retired to the patio to sit in the sunshine and enjoy a glass of wine. It felt good to know that I had done something constructive today, despite our internet woes, and I know that Stuart was pleased to have finished wading his way through a couple of months' worth of paperwork. Nevertheless, the lack of connectivity is deeply frustrating - it's isolating as well as being detrimental to our finances due to my inability to work, and we risk losing bookings on the apartment - Mr Satellite had better pull his finger out PDQ!
Day 3: Getting beyond a joke!
Today we awoke for the third day in a row with neither car nor internet. At least we know where the car is and why it's there! After having had no response from Italia Wi-Fi yesterday, Stuart decided to try and call their supplier this morning (Italia Wi-Fi is just a distributor), but failed to find any contact details for them. He therefore got back on Brad's case and eventually got a response, along with a number of activation codes for the software that was requesting it - none of which worked. It eventually all became clear that the provider had been subject to a malware attack (ironic, right?), but the "good news", we were told, was that "after working tirelessly for the last two weeks [they] think [they] have now found the point of entry where the systems were attacked." Even better, their "top engineers" are confident it will take a maximum of one week to clear all of the remaining problems and bring all accounts back online. WAIT. ONE WEEK?????!!! They estimate the all accounts will be back online and fully working by Thursday 4th June. That will be exactly a week since ours stopped working. To say that we are unimpressed would be the understatement of the year. We rely on our internet for my work, for taking bookings in the apartment, and for communicating with the outside world. A week's radio silence just isn't acceptible - but, as with the car, our hands are tied.
Anyhow, back to today. The morning started for me with a shopping trip into Pescia with the ever helpful Sue who arrived at 9.30am to pick up both me and my five bags of rubbish for taking to the bins for recycling. After our trips around both Esselunga and Lidl, we stopped for a well earned coffee and proper catch up in the little coffee shack in San Francesco quarter before heading back up the hill. While I'd been out, Stuart had not only been communicating with Italia Wi-Fi about the internet, but had also hung the washing out to dry and fixed the security lights (a fuse had blown).
Sue left us to our unpacking, after which we set about making some bean dip for lunch, which we ate in the sunshine on the patio.
After lunch, it was tempting to spend the afternoon soaking up the sunshine and reading a book, but instead, we each changed into work clothes and set about a couple of hours worth of outdoor work. I started by using up the rest of the can of spray paint on the water collection tank (it turns out that one can covers less than half of one tank...), then turned my attentions to weeding the flower beds in the guest garden. Meanwhile, Stuart planted more seedlings out, planted the caper plant we'd bought at the agricultural fete a few weeks ago, weeded, and tweaked the irrigation pipes on the vegetable terraces.
Come 4.30pm, it felt like time to call it a day, after all this was the weekend. We dragged the two sun loungers from the guest patio to our gravelled area (the area on which our pergola will stand - when we finally get approval to build it) and reclined on them with a beautiful view, a glass of chilled white wine and our books. We must have spent about an hour and a half just sitting in the sunshine reading - it felt both incredibly decadent and wonderfully relaxing, and felt all the better for knowing that we'd put a couple of hours' work in beforehand.
The sunshine stayed hot until about 6.45pm, at which point it started to cool just slightly, so I went indoors to cook a ligurian potato salad, which we ate at the patio while Reggie ran around barking at imaginary intruders (to be fair to him, I'm sure his super-sensitive ears could hear rustling and animal noises that our hearing couldn't pick up, but to all intents and purposes, to the human eyes and ears it appeared he was barking at nothing).
So, day 3 of having no internet and no car draws to a close, along with the prospect of potentially not having either of them back for another 4 days. Well, at least the sun is shining, the view is beautiful and the veg are growing.
Day 4:
Today we awoke to another beautiful morning of clear blue skies and sunshine. After Reggie allowed us a lie-in until 8am, we got up and ate a leisurely breakfast on the patio. At the time ticked on, we could feel the heat being turned up, so we decided not to delay Reggie's walk any longer - after not having had a walk yesterday, we owed him a good one today and so, with a full water bottle (for Reggie) and a full bag of treats (also for Reggie) in hand, we set off along the drive. Today, rather than walking up the road to Vellano we decided to turn left out of our drive and head down hill. We then took the fork in the road towards Sorana and headed along to Calamari, and right the way as far as Ponte di Sorana. Reggie started off as usual lunging at every car that passed us, but before long he stopped and sat patiently at the side of the road with us to wait for cars to pass - it seemed he had turned into the perfectly behaved dog, although I'm sure it was just temporary. We had a lovely walk - we loved seeing the scenery at a slower pace than we do when we zoom past in the car, and we enjoyed nosing at the paper mills, the closed up, abandoned looking dwellings as well as the beautifully kept houses with well manicured lawns and well tended flower beds. We did an about turn at Ponte di Sorana as we thought that Reggie had probably had more than enough of a walk for one day, and we slowly made our way home, getting back to the house just before midday.
After another leisurely lunch in the sunshine, we toyed with the idea of spending the afternoon relaxing in the sun with a book, but in the end our consciences got the better of us and we decided on another compromise - we decidede that, as we had done yesterday, we would work until around 4pm and then relax. So we both went and changed into work clothes and while Stuart finished the last of the insect screens for the living room window before heading down to the veg terrace to plant out more seedlings and do more weeding, I headed up to the terraces above the house with the strimmer, determined to get them looking neat and tidy. After my full-on day with the backpack strimmer on Friday, I seem to have made friends with it, and now find it a breeze to use - so there was no stopping me today. Well, I say 'no stopping', but in fact I had to traipse back down the terraces on four separate occasions to get Stuart to re-thread the cord that had either snapped or got stuck, and once to re-fuel, but come 4pm, the uppper terraces were looking a lot more presentable - there's still more that needs to be done, but with the prospect of not having any internet for the next few days, I figure that there's plenty of time to do that (that's for as long as we don't run out of fuel of course).
At 4pm, I gave up on strimming and started trying to hack away at the stubborn acacia stumps that were making the uppermost terraces look ragged and messy - Stuart, having finished with his seedlings, saw me struggling with the pruning saw and offered to come up with his chain saw. Needless to say, the chain saw made light work of the little tree stumps and before long we had some much neater looking terraces and a large pile of cut-off stumps, which we collected up in two crates and a bucket, with the plan being to use them in the fire pit over the course of the summer.
We eventually retired to the patio at about 4.45pm with a bottle of wine that we'd bought from one of the wineries we visited on our Montecarlo wine tour last weekend. Despite only costing €5, that's more than double what we would normally pay for a bottle of wine these days, and it tasted fantastic - all the better for having done a couple of hours of hard work.
We sat on the patio until around 7.20pm, at which point we decided it was time to come indoors and make preparations for dinner - despite the fact that it was still warmer outside than in. With the prospect of no internet in the foreseeable future, we are expecting to finalise some accounts tomorrow, look at our finances and make some decisions, and then maybe get back out on the terraces with the strimmer. Well, we have to make the most of a bad situation, don't we?!
As day 5 dawns, I have made a mercy dash to Chris and Sue's to hop on their internet and post this update via my tablet pc You'll have to forgive typos and lack of photos for now - we'll add those in when we're back up and running!
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